My crazy goat Angel Kiss (OMG)/Newsletter

What a fun week of new art, contests, and giveaways! But before I get into all of that, let me tell you a story...

Earlier this week I was hooking all 8 girls to their fence stations for feeding time (never fear, I don't leave them alone!) It's been a week now since I started this process. Remember how last week I said goats were smart?

And really, I swear they normally are!

I took hold of Angel Kiss's collar and the short bit of braided leash I created with the snap (like on a dog leash) on one end. I opened the snap as I pulled her to me—she's kind of obstinate, "I want food DESPERATELY but you will have to drag me to it!" And just before I snap the leash onto her collar she decided to start jumping around, thrashing her head from side to side where she managed to shove her EYE INTO THE DOG CLIP, successfully attaching the back corner of her eyelid TO THE CLIP! OMG!

When I was a kid I used to freak everyone out by saying, "What's grosser than gross?"

"Falling off a ten story building and getting your eyelid caught on a nail."

The hilarity that ensued by me and ONLY ME—it still makes me laugh!

Now I can tell a real life story! That just gave me the heebie jeebies so bad that once I got it out of Angel's eye, I stood there and just went, "Ohmygodohmygodohmygod." (shudder shudder, jump up and down, rub my hands up and down my arms to calm the goosebumps) aaaaaaacccccckkkk!

Let me say, she is FINE. Absolutely no issue at all and in fact kept bucking around until she got her food.

All of my goats are absolute drama queens.

Case in point:

Piper is part of the reason that I have my new little feeding system, she's a but chunky and likes to steal everyone else's food. She's on a diet now!

Speaking of diets! I've been gluten free for approximately 100 years now (12) and this week I made my first ever gluten free bagels! The rise twice-boil-and-bake kind. OMG! If you're gluten free you know that store bought bagels are :

and I don't bother anymore. They are very bready, no chewiness or flavor to them at all.

But THESE! Aren't they pretty and they were so yummy!

The boys bought me a proofing box for Christmas:

The dough almost doubled in size:

I kneaded the dough as the recipe said but maybe a little too much because the second resting/rising time didn't make them change much. Oh well, onto the boiling part, 1 minute each side.

Dip in salt and bake!

Mine had WAAAAY to much salt on them but it was easy enough to rub off. They were chewy and had good flavor, even if they weren't quite as big as they should have been. I will definitely try them again! Here is the recipe!

I suppose it was a baking week because my Aunt Katy and I had our monthly baking session on Wednesday—Morning Glory Muffins! We try something new, have lunch and gab. It's so wonderful being back in NC and being able to do that! Did I take a pic of those muffins? No. I did take this one of Katy and Tessa our livestock guardian dog, who also thought those muffins were delicious!

I swiped a pic of the muffins off of King Arthur Flour's website, ours actually looked just like this! You can get that recipe here!

On to this week's contests and giveaways!

Thank you all for some really great ideas, I loved reading them and giggling! And if I use your caption for another tshirt design, you will still get a free tshirt as a thank you! Winner of last week's "caption this" contest is Daelyn! Thanks for the "I see goat people!" Daelyn! I loved that M. Night Shyamalan movie and still occasionally have to creepily stage whisper, "I see dead people!" ;-)

You can get this shirt here. You can also get it with just Snickers the Goat (no caption) here.

I'm working on some horse designs and asked my fellow Equine Gestalt Coaches for some of their favorite photos to draw from. Yvonne won the week (and a tee!) Thank you Yvonne! This design isn't quite ready for a shirt but should be by next week!

If you would like a custom drawing of your own for your horse coaching or animal based business or to use in marketing--shoot me an email!

In this new year, in a new state (well, I lived here 18 years ago but it still feels very different!) with a business that needs to be renewed because of that move, I decided to start offering a weekly giveaway—an enter-to-win kind of thing.

This week's giveaway was a 6x9 fine art print of this watercolor:

Thank you to all who entered! Winner of this print of Leda is Risa D! I will be contacting you by email!  You can see other prints here.

But the rest of you, don't despair! I'm giving you guys 20% off EVERYTHING in my tshirt store, until next Sat 1/22, use the code FRIENDS20!

Next week's giveaway will be this print of my watercolor of Nettle, forward this email to your BABY GOAT loving friends so they can enter to win too!

If a friend forwarded you this email, you can subscribe here!

And speaking of BABY GOATS, come check out my latest YouTube short, where some mama goats are playing smashy face with each other! I don't know what got into them this week but they were all kinda wild! I've been keeping an eye on them and I haven't seen any of the three bred girls come back into heat, so we are still looking at April for BABY GOATS!

Hope your week is wildly fantastic and fun!

Love to all from the Mother Ranch,

Julia